After pairing with Palin, 'Dancing with the Stars' Mark Ballas goes maverick on debut solo CD

On the hit ABC-TV show "Dancing with the Stars" this season, dancer Mark Ballas helped take partner Bristol Palin — daughter of former Alaska governor and political maverick Sarah Palin — to third place.

It was one of "Dancing's" biggest controversies, with the 19-year-old Palin, who had no dance experience before the show started, beating out more experienced dancers such as the singer Brandy.

These days, Ballas has become somewhat of a maverick himself.

Not only is he putting as much energy into a music career as he has devoted to dancing, but he also has stepped away from a major label contract with Disney's Hollywood Records and his former group — Ballas Hough Band with "Dancing" co-star Derek Hough — to pursue a solo singer-songwriter career.

So when Ballas appears with another "Dancing" co-star, Chelsie Hightower, at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, he'll not only dance, but he'll offer an acoustic set of songs from his solo debut, "Love HurtBox," due out in February.

"Dancing is something that will always be in my heart — I've always wanted to dance. I've had it in my life my whole life," Ballas says. "But music is definitely the direction I want to go in and what I'm really passionate about and I enjoy it and I love it."

Success at dancing came first for Ballas, 24, a Texas native whose parents — champion competitive ballroom dancers and teachers Corky and Shirley Ballas — took him to London as an adolescent. There he won international dance competitions.

On the show, Ballas is one of two two-time champions. He won Season 6 with Olympic figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi and Season 8 with Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson. He also has danced with Kim Kardashian, actresses Shannon Doherty and Melissa Joan Hart and others.

But Ballas says music also came early to him. He says he started writing and playing when he was 10, and was playing acoustic shows by 15.

In 2005, while both were on "Dancing With The Stars," Ballas and Hough — whom Ballas says he has known since he was 9 — formed the pop-rock Ballas Hough Band. The group signed with Hollywood Records and in 2008 released a disc, "BHB," that broke the Billboard Top 100. Then in November 2009, the group performed on "Dancing with the Stars," singing "Move," which was to be a song on its sophomore album. But that disc never got made.

"It was just getting pushed in a way that I wasn't passionate about," Ballas says. "In this day and age, music all kind of starts, sometimes, to sound the same, and I think [Hollywood] wanted to go with what's safe and what they felt would suit us best rather than actually looking at it from an artistic point of view.

"I just feel like I was being stripped of all artistic and musicianship with that project, so I didn't want to be part of it anymore. … I kind of wanted to do my own thing and play my own music that I've written that is my style and more true to who I am as a musician and an artist. I think as a musician that art starts where copying stops and I didn't want to sound like everybody else."

With Hough's blessing, Ballas last year self-released an EP, "Waiting for Patience," and began work on his solo debut disc. Ballas says he used Hough as a sounding board, and even wrote a song with Hough, "Light On," for the new disc.

"Derek's my best friend in the world," Ballas says. "He came to my studio sessions for this album. I would play him mixes and asked him what he thought — 'Do you like this? Do you like that?' … So he completely understands and was, like, 'awesome.'

"When you hear this record, you're going to love it. It's just all the elements of live music. It's kind of like the John Mayer-meets- Maroon 5-meets- Robin Thicke kind of record. It's soulful, it's live, it's musical. We got great players on it. It's real music. It's a real vibe and heartfelt. And it sounds really great."

Rather than go the major label route, Ballas recorded the disc himself and will distribute it through Sony's RED, which handles albums by such independent artists as Mumford and Sons — "all those people who are upcoming … I think that's just the way to go these days."

While Ballas says "music is my passion," he says he dreams "of one day opening a school and having students and being able to travel with my music and come back to my studio.

"I dance for a living, that's how I make my money and everyone has a job — everyone does something to survive, and dance is mine. I teach dancing, I'm a professional dancer as my occupation."

That occupation caused some controversy on "Dancing with the Stars," when Palin made the finals over audience favorites such as singer Brandy. That led to the charge that supporters of Sarah Palin's Tea Party politics were skewing the vote.

Ballas said he even got death threats, and suspended his Twitter account for a week because of the uproar.